Dru Hetrick and the faded colors of the American dream

Dru Hetrick says about herself:

“I am an analog film photographer originally from NYC and currently based in Boston, MA. Film photography has been a part of my life since I first bought a 35mm camera when I was in high school. Along with studying photography in university, I’ve delved into the medium through personal documentation, travel, university study at Emerson College, and music photography. Upon discovering my favorite film format – 6×6 120mm – I started projects that studied the color of the urban landscape around me, while also carrying cameras with me to serve as a diary of the subtler beauties of my daily life. The patience to coexist with the environment or people around me and ample time to wander are key to creating my photos. I am continually adding to my American Colors and Snapshots series.”

About ‘American Colors’:

My American Colorsseries – as well as my preference to shoot with older film cameras – studies how the physical elements of an American era I’ve never experienced before is still connected to the America I experience today. When I think of ‘Americana’, I think of bright blues, reds and colorful neon. I think of fresh white picket fences, bright yellow dresses and freshly painted houses. But in the context of today, where architectural materials favor more minimalist metal, concrete and marble, these older colors take on new meaning much like the dreams of the people and country who made them.

The creation and breakdown of the American Dream over the course of the twentieth century and beyond is fascinating to me and I’m hoping to explore physical remnants of this theme through this series. Some images reveal a golden age long gone – relics of the bright commercial age of the ‘50s and ‘60s – while others gain a new identity within the context of a new time. Since the series began, I’ve shot around the Greater Boston Area, Upstate NY, Oregon, New Orleans and Austin. I prefer to go outside of the more ‘downtown’ areas of American cities and venture into the outskirts where I’m met with a mixture of industrialism, urban life and artifacts of commercialism. I’ll never get to live within the era in which many of the subjects of my photos were made new, so what’s left for me to experience is their decay – their fading colors.

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